In October 2008, Dwight Duncan, Ontario’s finance minister, received a call from Reid Bigland, president and chief executive officer of Chrysler Canada. He wanted to meet.

“It was the last Friday in October,” the former Windsor-Tecumseh MPP said Sunday, relaxed and talkative, wearing jeans, three days after retiring from a remarkable 25 years in politics. “I remember it very well.”

“They said if they don’t get $2 billion from the federal and provincial governments, everything will shut down. I’m from Windsor. Chrysler is Windsor.”

Flying back to Toronto that night, Duncan looked down at the lights in people’s homes.

“If these poor people knew what I know,” he remembered thinking, “they wouldn’t be sitting comfortably in their homes.”

The Great Recession had hit.

A month earlier, U.S. financial services firm Lehman Brothers had gone bankrupt, the largest bankruptcy in American history. Corporate tax revenue in Ontario began to plummet.

The U.S. wouldn’t let GM go down. That would devastate the U.S. economy. It was also a matter of pride; GM was the biggest corporation in the world, a symbol of U.S. industrial dominance. But the Americans were prepared to let Chrysler fall if they didn’t get a satisfactory deal.

In Ontario, 400,00o jobs were directly related to the Detroit Three.

“There was no way I could see letting Chrysler go down,” said Duncan.

It was a heck of a time to take on a heck of a job.

Being finance minister is a lonely job, mused Duncan.

“It’s very isolating, even among your cabinet colleagues,” he said. “You’re always the guy who says no. There are a dozen, two dozen decisions every budget that are very unpopular. When there’s good news, the premier delivers it. When there’s bad news, the finance minister delivers it.”

He took on the tough stuff – the HST, public sector wages, the deficit. Not everyone in the caucus agreed with him.

“When we decided to do the HST, we were very cognizant of the fact that there had never been a government that had brought in a value-added tax and gotten re-elected,” he said.

He managed to begin implementing restraint, though many would say too little, too late. Still, he also avoided catastrophic cuts to services.

He accepts responsibility for contributing to the $11.9-billion deficit. He warns that the interest payments on the province’s overall debt are a “ticking time bomb.” Still, he defends his government’s spending. Before the recession, expenditures never outpaced growth, he said. When the recession hit, the government’s decision to embark on the largest stimulus spending in Ontario’s history was “absolutely the right thing to do,” he said, creating jobs for the unemployed and investing in infrastructure.

“I loved the job, even in the worst days – though there were mornings I didn’t want to turn on the news,” he said. “There are a lot of good things you can do, provide money for this project and that project.”

Along with former Windsor West MPP Sandra Pupatello, Duncan did that like no other politician from Windsor – the Herb Gray Parkway, the University of Windsor medical and engineering schools, college and hospital expansions, the casino expansion and convention centre, the aquatic centre, underpasses on Howard Avenue and Walker Road. He literally helped change the face of this city.

And he’ll keep pushing for a new acute care hospital, he vowed.

“I’m going to be very active in this hospital,” he said. “I can push it. I can help raise money. I’ve got a bully pulpit, and I’m going to use it.”

Building the hospital, engineering school and other projects keeps people working and contributes to future economic growth and diversification, he said. But there are still too many unemployed people, empty factories and declining neighbourhoods. There is no one big fix, he warned.

“We are going through a fundamental change. I don’t know where we’re going to end up. But this community is a lot different than it was 10 years ago, and 10 years from now, it’s going to be a lot different.”

People said Duncan was done after his bid for the party leadership in 1996 finished in a fiasco. He ended up supporting rival MPP Gerard Kennedy, whom Duncan’s supporters despised. Furious, they accused him of selling his soul and turned their backs on him in disgust. A documentary on the convention, aired on national TV, showed him whimpering for his then-wife, Windsor lawyer Laura Joy, and begging for forgiveness. (He now calls it all a “wonderful experience.”)

Yet, in the end, he won five straight elections as MPP, became the second longest serving finance minister in the province in the post-war period, and deputy premier in a Liberal government that won an historic three consecutive mandates. Counting two terms on city council before becoming an MPP, he has represented every corner of the city.

“What’s that saying,” he said, quoting Rudyard Kipling, “if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat these two imposters just the same…”

At 54, Duncan says he’s quitting on his own terms. I don’t know if I believe that. He wasn’t going to run in the last election. He changed his mind because the party was behind in the polls and he was finance minister – “first mate.” He didn’t want to let his party down. Then, a year into the term, Premier Dalton McGuinty suddenly quit. Duncan said he thought about finishing his term, but he believes governments have a life span of about eight years, and his is up.

“The people of Windsor-Tecumseh should have a person who’s doing more than just putting in time until the next election, someone who wants to be a part of the future,” he said.

“You fight like heck to get this job,” he said, “but short of being defeated by voters, there’s no easy way to get out.”

Former Windsor-St. Clair MP Shaughnessy Cohen died in office, and former Windsor West MP Herb Gray was kicked out by his own party.

“To be able to say it’s time to go, not having lost or been kicked out by my own party, I actually felt pretty good about it,” he said.

He’ll take home a severance of $248,500 plus a pension. It’s not the gold-plated pension for MPs, but “compared to the average person, it’s a good package,” he said.

He lost the staff and the driver – and the midnight calls and stacks of briefings. He’s watched a couple movies, been to dinner with a friend and leaves for Florida on Monday.

“I’ve been out of cabinet for almost a week, and it’s been wonderful,” he said.

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